Graham Dunning

Spending more time writing recently – journalling, blogging and writing some articles and papers – I’d become a bit frustrated with my cheap, light-touch bluetooth keyboard. I felt like I needed something chunkier and more tactile, slightly more responsive and nicer to use. My second critera was price: I got this one for about £30. Finally I wanted to have separate number pad keys, so didn’t want anything too compact. In part I wanted to be able to play Caves of Qud properly again at some point, and in part for nostalgia for when I used to use an external num-pad for selecting patterns on Fruity Loops for live sets.

I like the colour sheme – off-white, dark grey and orange – and coincidentally it matches various other things on my desk, including stationery and the book I’m currently reading. It also reminds me of a Roland TR-707, one of my favourite drum machines. In fact, the 707 is the only model from the range I’ve actually had a play with, and its chunkiness, and plasticky feel is a bit smilar to this keyboard too.

Though it wasn’t a factor in choosing a new keyboard, the sounds it makes have taken a bit of getting used to. The soft-touch keyboard was almost silent, and this one is very clacky indeed. I was immediately reminded of the Mechanical Keyboard Sounds album released by Trunk Records a few years back. Somewhere between a novelty record, an archival document and an ASMR collection, the tracks feature typing on various retro and modern setups, with different degrees of lubrication and modding. The mechanical keyboard scene is a rabbit hole I can’t afford to be drawn into, either in terms of money or time, but I’m now accutely aware of some upgrades I could make to the way my tying sounds.